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girls. I’d surely be too much woman for you.”
    Connie had been hired by the city at a time when they were still called clerk typists and had been the homicideadmin for thirty years. Sinclair grinned. “I’d be willing to try.”
    “I transferred your phone line to me, so let me know if you want it back,” she said to Sinclair. Then she punched the flashing button on her phone. “Sorry for the wait, so how may I help you?”
    Sinclair continued past the seven empty desks belonging to the homicide suppression team and caught the lieutenant’s eye as he passed his office door. “I’ll be right in, Lieutenant,” he said. Four of the other eight homicide investigators assigned to the unit sat at their desks. Their eyes followed Sinclair as he dropped his briefcase on his desk.
    “Seventeen-year-old boy from Danville, dead on a bus bench at Fifty-Second and MLK, hands and feet bound, no gunshot or stab wounds,” Sinclair announced to satisfy them.
    Sinclair filled his dark blue coffee mug, an outline of a dead body printed on one side and “Homicide: Our Day Begins When Someone Else’s Ends” on the other, and headed to the lieutenant’s office. Seated in the glass-walled office behind a gray metal desk twice the size of Sinclair’s was a flabby man in his late forties with thinning hair. Carl Maloney’s sole investigative experience had been working Internal Affairs, so when he was given the coveted homicide commander position, everyone knew it was a reward for his loyalty to the chief. Nevertheless, Sinclair liked him because Maloney didn’t pretend to know anything about homicide investigations and seldom told his people how to do their jobs.
    Sinclair eased into a vinyl-covered chair in front of Maloney’s desk. “We talked to the parents,” he said. Braddock slipped into the chair next to him. “According tothem, the kid’s an angel. We stopped at the Starbucks where the kid left his car last night and talked with the Danville cops. So far, they got nothing. We figure the vic either left there with someone willingly and things later went bad, or someone snatched him.”
    “What makes it a homicide?”
    Sinclair knew that people at City Hall and the chief’s office wanted someone to blame every time another homicide number was added to the yearly tally, and as the messenger, the homicide lieutenant was often that person. Sinclair explained the bruising, needle marks, and attire. “The boy had no prior drug use. Hands and legs zip-tied.”
    Maloney looked past them for a moment. “Let’s wait until we see the autopsy. The chief’s office is getting questions already from the head of the hospital’s department of medicine, so keep me apprised.”
    Sinclair got up and took a step to the door as Maloney added, “Have you finished your press release?”
    “I haven’t even sat . . .”
    “I’m not about to tell you who you can date, but it created problems during your previous tour in homicide when Channel Six reported on murders before we even put out a press release.” Maloney’s chair creaked when he leaned forward. “Let’s just say I’d appreciate it if we avoided that problem this time around.”
    “I’ll get it done first thing, Lieutenant.”
    *
    News from the Oakland Police Department
    At 0458 hours (4:58 a.m.), Oakland Police officers and emergency medical personnel were dispatched to areport of an unresponsive person on a bus bench in the 5200 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Upon arrival, they discovered a male juvenile with no apparent signs of life. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene. The victim, whose name is being withheld pending notification of next of kin, has been identified as a seventeen-year-old Danville resident. There were no visible signs of trauma, and the cause of death will be determined following an autopsy later today by the Alameda County Coroner’s Office. Anyone with any information is urged to call Sergeants Sinclair or Braddock of the